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Some photos from a long day…

Today was a beautiful day on the North Slope! Low clouds formed over Oliktok Point, replacing the clear weather we’d seen yesterday. This set up a very interesting scene, with the clouds supported by an air layer that was not the same one as was being observed at the surface. A perfect reason to deploy some unmanned aircraft and a tethered balloon to see what’s going on up there! We didn’t waste the opportunity, and sampled the atmosphere from sun up until well after sunset. It was a very long day, so for the time being I’ll let the photos do the talking!

The tethered balloon getting ready for flight, as seen from a morning DataHawk flight.

Dancing among the clouds — A DataHawk samples the cloud base environment high over Oliktok Point.

Temperature profiles from today’s flights, showing the evolution of the surface and cloud-driven layers.

The newly forming sea ice, as seen from 20 meters altitude during a DataHawk flight this afternoon.

The tethered balloon during a good snow squall. It looks as though Carl’s VIPS instrument was able to sample some significant snowfall today.

Eric, a member of the tethered balloon crew, bringing the POPS (top) and VIPS (bottom) instruments back in after a long day of sampling.

Al, Carl and Matt working to get the last few meters of tether in at the end of the day. All smiles — thanks to everyone for helping to get some great measurements today!

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Unmanned Aircraft on Alaska’s North Slope, part 3

CIRES scientist Gijs de Boer, who works in NOAA’s Physical Sciences Division, will work with a team of University of Colorado Boulder scientists and engineers at Oliktok Point, Alaska from 10-22 October to deploy the DataHawk unmanned aircraft system (UAS). This UAS was developed and instrumented in collaboration with the Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV) in CU-Boulder's Aerospace Engineering department, and is being deployed in collaboration with the Integrated Remote and In-Situ Sensing (IRISS) CU "Grand Challenge" effort. The purpose of these flights is to obtain measurements of thermodynamic properties of the lower atmosphere, including information on the exchange of energy between the Earth’s surface and the overlying air during the initial formation of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean. Data collected during these flights will aid in understanding Arctic climate and processes critical to sea ice formation. In addition to the DataHawk activities, CIRES/PSD scientist Matthew Shupe and NCAR scientist Carl Schmitt will deploy instruments on a tethered balloon system operated by the US Department of Energy’s ARM program. And—the team will deploy a turbulence probe developed at the University of Leeds, an ice crystal imager developed at NCAR, and an aerosol spectrometer developed in the NOAA Chemical Sciences Division. These sensors will provide information on the structure of the atmosphere, clouds and precipitation, and the aerosol particles that go into cloud formation. Follow our work, funded by the US Department of Energy and supported by CIRES, NOAA, CU and NCAR, on this blog!